“We made four arrests last night,” he said. “We have constituted a special team to continue investigations and by the grace of God there will further arrests today.”

The four are believed to include Ms Parveen’s maternal uncle, two cousins and a driver.

After his arrest, Muhammad Azeem, her father, told officers that he felt no regret because “she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent”.

She had been on her way to court with her husband to present a statement that she had married of her own free will – in an attempt to thwart her family’s allegations that she had been kidnapped.

However, in the days since Tuesday when the attack happened, the case has seen several twists, shining a light on the brutality that many ordinary women face in Pakistan.

Her husband, Mohammad Iqbal, 45, has confessed to strangling his first wife, in order to marry Ms Parveen. And relatives told The Daily Telegraph that her sister had also been killed by her family in an honour killing for rejecting an arranged marriage.

Such crimes frequently go unreported. Last year there were almost 900 reported “honour killings” although campaigners fear the real number is far higher.

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, has ordered an immediate investigation into how a woman could be killed close to the court, apparently in the presence of police officers.